Mid-sized towns in rural areas support the spatially balanced and sustainable development as enforced by territorial policy, as well as preservation of area-comprehensive public service in all partial areas. However, the article also shows that mid-sized towns have a wide range of development potentials that require targeted support by instruments of state development, regional and structural policy. In the scope of the debate about future-capable regional development and assurance of infrastructure supply in rural spaces, a number of fields for action becomes evident for rurally-peripheral areas in order to design the challenges of socio-economical structural change processes.
All in all, it therefore can be said that the article makes an important contribution in the scope of the discussion
of design of development and socio-economic structural change in rurally-peripheral regions, and that it has ad direct practical benefit for politics and planning practice.
